Into the Night
by Wildfire Dragon
Summary: Draco finds Hermione on the night of Harry's death.


THE GRAVE OF MR POTTER

It was a cold, clear night when Hermione Granger apparated beneath the willow tree in a tiny run down graveyard on the outskirts of Godrick's Hollow. It was the 19th of November, an unspectacular night in the muggle world but in hers, it was the one night she knew exactly where she was going to be. No matter the consequences, no matter the danger, every year she would find her way back to the graveyard and spend the night with the one man who had always respected her for who she was. The one man who should have been alive in her place.

Winding her way through the tumbled gravestones, a light snow dusting their stony expressions like icing sugar, dark, travel stained cloak rippling behind her, she finally came to the gravestone she was looking for. She bent down, her knees barely registering the frost on the ground and cleared away the withered blooms she had placed there last year. Fumbling for the wand in the pocket of her cloak, she cast a quick spell and set the new blooms against the stone. They were yellow, the colour of spring, his favourite season. She twirled the wand between her fingers, staring at it contemptuously. It wasn't hers; she had buried her wand long ago after firing a killing curse at a hoarde of death eaters. She had known Voldemort would have put a trace on her wand – she was the Gryffindor girl, best friend and some even whispered, the brain behind Harry Potter – but she still wished she could have her old wand back. It had saved her live more times than she cared to remember, almost as if it was capable of pre-empting the spell she was reaching for. She tucked the wand back into her cloak and wiped at a stray tear trickling down her cheek. Her fingers were frozen when they touched her skin, almost as if there were no blood in her left to warm her. The frost crept slowly up her baggy clothes, stolen from a recycling point on the edge of a run down estate. Almost everything she owned, she had stolen from somewhere. The cloak was the only good thing the Death Eaters had ever gifted her – it was thick and lined with matted wool and as dark as shadow. She had spent many nights curled under it, tucked beneath a layer of wards and protective charms, dreaming of the days when she had been happy.

His godfather's house had the air of desertion that clung to places where death had come to reside. It was in the walls, growing in the patterns of black mold, and in the frost on the leaded window panes. The interior had been ransacked again, books tumbled from shelves, spells cast without care their traces as large as a minefield, and writing on the wall above the fireplace.

'Turncoat.' - it read.

Draco Malfoy had heard the word whispered for years about his bloodline but seeing it, fresh, above his godfather's fire place was enough to make his fists clench and his jaw click angrily into place. It had been written in blood and he could guess the nature of the poor victim who had had it taken from them unwillingly. He cast a cleansing charm, and collapsed into a dusty armchair, its padding leaking out through slash marks that looked suspiciously like claws. He didn't know why he came back here, but each year he would return. The same night, as the moon was high and the Death Eaters were out hunting, he would return to his godfather's house and sit vigil, wishing things were different. Cleansing the small house of all the evil that had happened there. It was no longer protected by wards, either of blood or promise – Voldemort had seen to that. Draco twirled his wand between his fingers and felt himself relax ever so slightly. He sifted through his memories and began to allot them into sections – one for the Dark Lord, one deep within where nobody would ever find them and the others he discarded like junk. The girl in the coffee queue that had smiled at him the day before yesterday, Astoria and her latest lover on their marriage bed, rutting like animals. He slotted everything away carefully, mechanically. The cleansing charm done, he stood up and walked to the small kitchen where his godfather's cauldron still sat, pride of place above the open fire. Somebody had placed a rotten piece of meat within. The smell turned Draco's stomach. He quickly retrieved his bottle of firewhiskey, carefully hidden so that nobody but him could find it and took a deep swig from the bottle. He would be summoned soon, when the Death Eaters grew bored and sought out the familiar entertainment in his basement. Not even the firewhiskey could soothe the burn of that thought. He had long ago given up on walking the dungeon corridor, he entrusted the key to a house-elf who the Death Eaters were forbidden to harm. He thought with a sudden lurch of a girl with frizzy hair who had always assumed he was cruel to his house elves.

_I am not my father. _

He took a deep swig from the bottle, then wandered through the kitchen towards the back door. The moon was high in the sky, smiling down on him. Perhaps it was unaware of the events going on below it, or perhaps it simply didn't care. Draco wished he had that luxury. His left arm was burning but he ignored it. It was not yet a full blown ache, which meant he had a few more hours.

_A few precious hours of freedom, on the night everything changed._

It was odd that he had chosen to remember this night, to hold his own form of vigil as it were. To many death eaters it was simply a chance to celebrate, although Draco knew there weren't many nights where they didn't go out and practice their own form of celebration. He wondered how many had been on Voldemort's side the day Harry had fallen. Not as many as claimed to be, that was for sure. His father and mother had been there, but they hadn't wanted too. Not by that point. And Draco?

_I was trying to keep _from_ splintering into a dozen pieces, so I did nothing. _

He drank the last of the firewhiskey and peered out the frosted window at the graveyard where the Order had erected a stone in Harry's memory. There hadn't been enough of him left to merit a coffin. It still made Draco queasy to think of that day, of the spell that had torn Harry into a million pieces and scattered his dying scream on the wind. He had wanted to scream as well but he had held it in, had dug his fingers into his palms until his blood had dripped onto the mud beneath his feet. He set the bottle on the counter and was about to turn away when he saw a movement in the darkness of the graveyard. A figure, cloaked and hooded was wandering amongst the stones. Draco held his breath as he watched. He knew which stone the figure knelt it and with a sickening lurch of his gut, he knew who else had came to stand vigil at the grave of Harry Potter.

"You shouldn't be here."

She barely started at the sound of his voice, but he saw her hand reach in her cloak to find her wand. He had his own drawn in a second, but he knew he had no intention of using it. Hermione Granger – the girl who lived, who had taken on a gang of 30 Death Eaters and came out alive. Draco had no intention of finding out whether the rumours were correct.

"I have every right to be here." she replied, keeping her face in shadow.

"You could be captured."

"I believe I already have been." she pointed out, her wand held out. It was aimed straight at his heart. His heart was skipping like a wild beast in his chest. "Will you summon him, or will you take me to him yourself?" Her voice was icy, nothing like the fiery girl he had used to taunt in high school. In it he could hear the months of running, of living on the fringes of a world that no longer accepted her as she was. He could hear the hurt, and betrayal and it made him feel sick.

"Granger..." his voice trailed off but he found himself lowering his wand. The empty bottle of firewhiskey was still clutched in his hand. He let it drop onto the ground, saw her brown eyes follow it as if she expected it to suddenly careen towards her.

"What are you doing here, Malfoy? Have you come to gloat over the boy who died? Have you come to tell me my muddy blood is no good to anyone?" her voice never wavered, neither did her wand.

"No."

"Then why are you here? Shouldn't you be torturing muggle borns and mudbloods?"

"Don't presume you know me Granger." Was that his voice, so deep and gravelly?

"Oh but I do know you Malfoy." She pushed herself to her feet and Malfoy caught a flash of baggy, tattered clothing beneath the oversized cloak she wore. The bones in her hand stood out stark against her skin. "I know you are still a spiteful boy, wishing for fame and fortune and clinging to the Dark Lord in the hope that he will notice and give you the glory you seek." she spat onto the ground.

"Then you know nothing Granger."

Her laugh was like a knife on a chalkboard. There was no trace of the Granger who had laughed with her two friends in the corridors of Hogwarts, who had spent days in the library, seeking out knowledge the way a death eater sought out muggles.

"Prove me wrong Malfoy."

"How?"

"If you have to ask, you will never learn." she began to walk away from him, her cloak trailing in the frost of the graveyard, the ragged hem glittering like crystals.

"Don't twist the words of the Grey Lady Granger. Tell me what you want. Tell me why you are here." he called after her.

"I'm here to see Harry." she turned and gestured to the grave and for a moment Draco thought he saw the shadow of a tear in her eyes. The moonlight glinted off their surface and proved him wrong. She was made of steel and ice, much as he was. Silence fell between them as she watched him, and he watched her in turn.

"I can show you where he really is." the words were out before he could stop them. Her head snapped up to look at him, the hood of her cloak tumbling down to reveal strands of brown curls, not as frizzy as it had once been but still definitely Granger. For a moment, he thought he saw the hint of a smile play around her mouth, before the frost took her over once more and she was staring at him stonily. He turned away from her as the silence grew, became jagged and dangerous.

"Please, Malfoy." she called after him, just as he was about to leave the graveyard and the Golden duo behind for good.

They apparated to a quiet woodland glade. Hermione, who was normally quite good at figuring out where she was based on what surrounded her was at a loss. The trees crowded around her but didn't seem to impeach on the calmness that settled around the glade like the mist dangling like cobweb strands from the branches. She shivered despite herself. The place may have been idyllic but it was lonely, far from anywhere and Hermione might not have known much, but she knew Harry would have liked to have been buried by his parents. If somebody had buried him here, it meant they had known there was no chance Voldemort would allow the body to be interred in the empty coffin that filled the space beside Harry's parents. Draco pulled the hood of his cloak up and gestured for her to follow him. They walked for twenty minutes in silence, the only sound the snapping of brittle branches beneath their feet. Hermione's trainers were soaked through; like almost everything else she owned, they weren't hers. She had stolen them from a bag of goods left outside a charity shop. They only fit her feet if she wore three thick pairs of socks with them. They walked deeper into the glade until the suspicion that Malfoy was leading her into the woods to murder her was less a notion than a certainty. She wasn't afraid of death; death had been following her around for three years and in a way it seemed fitting to die at the hands of the boy who had tormented her throughout high school. She was exhausted and tired of running, and she wanted to see her friends again. Loneliness wasn't something she had chosen, it was something that had chosen her.

"This place is familiar." she croaked as they reached a clearing and Draco stopped, the hood of his robe concealing his pale features. She could see eyes watching her from beneath it; dark silver, cold as the metal itself.

"This is where Alastair Moody died." he informed her coldly. There was no hint of emotion in his voice.

"How would you know that?" Hermione felt a cold dread spread through her entire body. Moody had been the last hope, a true defender of the Order.

"I helped him here."

"You set him up?" she wanted to scream, to launch herself at him but she had no energy left. The words left her mouth in a dull monotone.

"Think what you like Granger. I didn't bring you here to explain myself to you." a hint of tiredness had crept into his voice and for a moment Hermione thought he sounded as exhausted as she did. She wondered what could have happened in the perfect heirs life to have made him so bone weary. It wasn't as if he had seen his best friend, and the chosen one, the one who was supposed to end the war die right in front of him. He had had the easy way out, pledging loyalty to a man he had already sworn to follow to the grave, whose beliefs had been his own since the day he was born.

"Why did you bring me here Malfoy?" she let her eyes wander around the clearing and settled on a simple wooden cross dug into the marshy ground. She felt tears well up in her honey eyes and she fought down the burning in the back of her throat. She wouldn't let Malfoy see her cry.

"I thought you would want to see him." he replied simply. When she turned around to look at him over her shoulder, he was staring absently at the sky. There were barely any clouds but the stars seemed tiny and far too distant to be able to grant her any wishes. The words stuck in her throat but she had always been raised to be polite to those who helped her and whether she liked it or not, Malfoy had helped her.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome Granger."


End file.
